First Read: “Romney actually won the independent vote, 50%-45%. So now twice in the last three elections — in 2004 and 2012 — the winner has lost the indie vote. What does this mean? Well, party ID appears to matter much more: In 2004, it was even; in 2008, it was D+7; and last week, it was D+6. Also, many polls have different ways of deciding who is an ‘independent’; some pollsters include ‘lean Dems and lean GOPers’ in their independent number which lately has given the indie number a GOP skew. If you move the leaners into their own parties, then you get a more pure indie subgroup (and you also realize how really small of a subgroup it is).”

Rasmussen Reports, which had Mitt Romney leading President Obama on the final day of the presidential campaign and picked the winner in just three of nine swing states, explains:

“A preliminary review indicates that one reason for this is that we
underestimated the minority share of the electorate. In 2008, 26% of
voters were non-white. We expected that to remain relatively constant.
However, in 2012, 28% of voters were non-white. That was exactly the
share projected by the Obama campaign. It is not clear at the moment
whether minority turnout increased nationally, white turnout decreased,
or if it was a combination of both. The increase in minority turnout has
a significant impact on the final projections since Romney won nearly
60% of white votes while Obama won an even larger share of the minority
vote.”

“Another factor may be related to the generation gap. It is interesting
to note that the share of seniors who showed up to vote was down
slightly from 2008 while the number of young voters was up slightly.”

John Heilemann “This is a
president unusually focused in the present on what his legacy will be in
the future. With Obama’s reelection, one foundational element of that
legacy has been secured: the Affordable Care Act, which, had he been
defeated, would not only likely have been repealed but retrospectively
reduced to one of the causes of his loss. Now, with a second term ahead
of him, among Obama’s paramount goals, say his advisers, is to add
another glittering trophy to his mantle: at least one more
domestic-policy reform tantamount in importance to near-universal health
care.”

“The shiniest such prize would be the achievement of a grand bargain on
entitlements and tax reform: a bipartisan agreement that would put the
nation’s fiscal house in order for years, and maybe decades, to come.
The extent to which Obama pines for this was illustrated by his ardent
pursuit of such a megadeal in 2011, which ultimately fell apart when
House Speaker John Boehner proved unable to move the tea-party faction
in his caucus to accept new revenues.”

Jonathan Chait: “Like every president, Obama won for myriad reasons, important and petty. But his reelection was hardly small and hardly devoid of ideas. Indeed, it was entirely about a single idea. The campaign, from beginning to end, was an extended argument about economic class…”

“If there is a single plank in the Democratic platform on which Obama can claim to have won, it is taxing the rich. Obama ignored vast swaths of his agenda, barely mentioning climate change or education reform, but by God did he hammer home the fact that his winning would bring higher taxes on the rich. He raised it so relentlessly that at times it seemed out of proportion even to me, and I wrote a book on the topic. But polls consistently showed the public was on his side.”

“Obama’s goal was to prove to the GOP that their rigid defense of the richest one percent was political poison and to force them to bend. For now, at least, their same monomaniacal refusal to increase any taxes on the rich is leading Republicans to deny any connection between the tax issue and Obama’s victory.”

“If another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a
horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue. The
college-age daughters of many of my friends voted for Obama because they
were completely turned off by Neanderthal comments like the suggestion
of ‘legitimate rape.'”

— Former Bush adviser Karen Hughes, quoted by Politico.

New York Times: “Christian conservatives, for more than two decades a pivotal force in American politics, are grappling with Election Day results that repudiated their influence and suggested that the cultural tide — especially on gay issues — has shifted against them. They are reeling not only from the loss of the presidency, but from what many of them see as a rejection of their agenda. They lost fights against same-sex marriage in all four states where it was on the ballot, and saw anti-abortion-rights Senate candidates defeated and two states vote to legalize marijuana for recreational use.”

“The election results are just one indication of larger trends in American religion that Christian conservatives are still digesting… Americans who have no religious affiliation — pollsters call them the ‘nones’ — are now about one-fifth of the population over all… The younger generation is even less religious: about one-third of Americans ages 18 to 22 say they are either atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular. Americans who are secular are far more likely to vote for liberal candidates and for same-sex marriage. Seventy percent of those who said they had no religion voted for Mr. Obama…”

“We would rather lose with you than win with anyone else.”

— Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades, quoted by ABC News, talking to Mitt and Ann Romney several days after the election.

Politico: “Democrats had argued for months before the election that Republican polling was screening out voters who would ultimately turn up to support Obama. In fact, Obama advisers said, if you applied a tighter likely voter screen to Democratic polling — counting only the very likeliest voters as part of the electorate — you could come up with results similar to what the GOP was looking at.”

“By assuming that only the most enthusiastic voters would actually show up, Republicans greatly overestimated their national position. Operatives and activists rejected public polling data that showed substantially more voters identifying themselves as Democrats in states like Ohio and Virginia, giving Republicans an unwarranted sense of confidence that crumbled last Tuesday.”

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told his GOP members on a conference call that their party lost the elections, badly, “and while Republicans would still control the House and would continue to staunchly oppose tax rate increases as Congress grapples with the impending fiscal battle, they had to avoid the nasty showdowns that marked so much of the last two years,” the New York Times reports.

“Members on the call, subdued and dark, murmured words of support — even a few who had been a thorn in the speaker’s side for much of this Congress.”

Despite a terrible showing on Election Day, Karl Rove believes that American Crossroads and its more secretive issue-advocacy arm, Crossroads GPS — which allows donors to remain anonymous — are here to stay, the Washington Post reports.

“Rove is pondering new missions for Crossroads to address weaknesses laid bare by the GOP’s back-to-back failures to win the White House and the fact that the party fell short when expected to win back the Senate.”

“Where until now it battled only in general elections and against Democrats, Crossroads is considering whether to start picking sides in Republican primaries. The idea would be to boost the candidate it deems most electable and avoid nominating the kind of flawed and extreme ones who cost the party what should otherwise have been easy Senate wins in Florida, Missouri and Indiana.”